


Pain Makes You Beautiful

by Pixileanin



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Community: HPFT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-10-12 02:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10480593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixileanin/pseuds/Pixileanin
Summary: Sirius Black crashes down.





	

No one makes Remus Lupin do anything he doesn’t want to. 

Me, I’m easy. No, that’s not true. I do things when I have reasons. I leave my family. I mock my heritage. I rebel against the ground under my own feet and I fall gracelessly out of favor with everyone who has power over me. I sink into an impenetrable gloom. When I’m young and can’t see my way out, there’s this headmaster at my school who tries to talk sense into me, and I blow him off too, even though he’s not done anything to deserve it. I’m not even sixteen years old, and my life is over.

There’s this one day that I’ll never forget. I’m at the bottom of the lake when James, Remus and Pete heave me out of my early grave and tell me what a shit friend I am. I don’t breathe until Remus makes the others back off. There’s something about having some scarred up, scrawny bloke with fervent green eyes telling me I’m doing it all wrong that makes me sit up and listen. Then James goes about fixing me.

That’s what James does. He’s got money, so he gives it. He’s got family, so he shares it. He’s got love, so he drowns his wife in it. It’s sweet. Sort of. When I’m not choking in the charitable overflow.

He’s my brother… our brother. Gets Pete that job at the mill after school. He tries to help Remus too, but Remus has this thing about needing to be on his own. He holds this monster inside of him and then has to let it out every month so it won’t kill him from the inside. The poor sod comes back to us shattered, and we piece him back together. We bond over it. Remus makes us belong to each other. 

We’re almost done with school when Remus reads about his dad in the papers. No owl. No funeral. His mother can’t afford the closure. It’s how she leaves him too, open-ended. She graces him with an hour-long visit in the middle of exams week, runs her fingers gingerly along his shoulder like he’d break, even though he’s been broken and put back together so many times, it’s a wonder she even recognizes him as her own son anymore.

The greying hair. The kind eyes that want to forgive but only make things worse by remembering. And pity. It burns whatever affection is in the air and spits out ashes of resentment.

She has to blame someone for destroying her family. His father is dead, and it might as well have been the monster within him that did it. By the end of her visit, the monster is all that she can see.

He shuts down, and I have to tell him when she leaves. I soothe him with words and tell him that she’s gone and can’t hurt him anymore. Remus doesn’t like to think of it that way. He needs what she gives him.

“When it hurts, I know that I’m capable of feeling… something. I hate being so empty all the time.”

The common room is abandoned and it’s way past midnight. Remus throws the obituaries into the fire. I wrap him up in my arms and hold him while he silently cries. The wet touches my arm, and I hold him tighter, as if I could squeeze the pain right out of him and replace it with something better. Part of me recoils from that thought, but I recover. I’m better than her.

I run on empty most of the time. Remus is the only one who bothers to notice. It’s always, “Sirius, eat this,” or, “Have a slice of toast before you go.” Sometimes I think food is the only way he knows how to care. Maybe it’s all he ever gets from his mum. It can be like affection, this nurturing thing, or whatever the hell it is.

He teaches me how to stop hating people.

We graduate, and I find myself running before I’m ready to walk. I need my space. The first thing James does when I get my own flat is christen it with sweat and blood. He drinks all my Firewhiskey and tells me he’s fighting against people who want to strip away our freedom. He says he’s part of a secret group, and I get over the part where he says it’s run by our meddlesome headmaster so I can join him. So does Remus. Pete, too. We bleed for each other. Red runs between us, and we laugh about it.

Marlene’s a sweet thing with sharp teeth, and she fights with us. She teaches me how to love people again. Maybe for the first time, because I don’t know what kindness is until she shows me that speaking the truth doesn’t mean being a dick about it. Summer stifles our propriety, and I am drawn to her like a moth to wool. 

I keep my flat tidy, because Marlene prefers the floors swept and the sinks shined. It’s where I can do what I want, have who I want. Marlene’s acute. She thinks I’m in love with someone else. Talks about fairness. Talks about how she deserves more than half of me. 

This is the part where I drift. I don’t like what comes next. As shit as it all is, it’s the best time of my life.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, James becomes a target. He says he has to disappear, and his life depends on me knowing where he is and saying nothing. I say yes to him because I never turn him down. It’s the only time I think he ever asks me for anything. We perform the Fidelius Charm over Glendronach and ice. For the perversion of it. Because after that, I can know where he is, but I can’t see him. It’s not enough.

My best friend. My brother. He’s gone, and I can’t tell anyone.

Marlene comes when I’m down. She tells me that she might love me, and I believe her. I tell her I need her and she frowns. Her eyes search me and I feel naked under her scrutiny when she asks me what I am. 

I don’t want to answer. I stop asking, and she stops coming.

Remus comes frequently. 

He goes when he likes, and most of the time I don’t bother him. Tonight I feel the cold more than usual. I miss Marlene, I miss James. But I miss Remus more when he leaves.

“Where are you going?” I say, when I know exactly where he’s going. Habitual. Predictable.

“Out,” he says, giving me that sideways glance that tells me he wants company without the strings. 

When Pete says it like that, we give him shit. We try following him a few times, but he turns rat and we lose him in the shadows. Afterwards, he offers no explanation, and we eventually stop giving him shit. Until he does it again.

But this is Remus. He won’t say it, so I have to guess whether he’s lonely enough to stand me, or if he just wants to wallow in his own shite for the night.

I go. We drink. We get smashed. We get home and smash into each other. I know he wants this because his eyes smolder with more than nothing. Ecstasy gives way to an awkward reckoning, and he pulls away. There’s a next time, and a next. It turns into a vicious cycle that neither of us can stop. We learn not to look so guilty.

There are two kinds of scars. The ones that bind us together, and the ones that leave a gulf between us. I don’t know what Remus does to me, but I like it. Too much, I think.

It hurts me when he’s gone.

That’s why my former headmaster wants me to talk to him. Dumbledore. What a prick.

The Order meeting is crowded. Someone’s idea of spacious, smothered with bodies. I passingly wonder if the Fire Marshall's “requisite means of egress” has been overtaxed, and think about starting a blaze just to see. Dumbledore catches my eye and my thoughts are snuffed out. I put the match back in my pocket and look around. If she’s here, Marlene’s giving me an earful for my audacity, but she’s not. I don’t think about why.

After plans and solemnities, Dumbledore pulls me aside and stares me down. His words are for Remus, but he tells me instead. It’s a mission, he says. He tells me how to convince Remus to do it, and I refuse. I can’t. Won’t. I don’t tell him that I ache for Remus to come back to me. In the blacks of his eyes, my former headmaster understands me perfectly, and I hate him for it. I don’t want to be understood by him, or anyone. 

Fuck. He knows.

I don’t want anyone to know. I’m shit tired of explaining myself to people. What I am. What I’m not. 

Right now, I’m nothing without Remus.

He’s not here this time when he pushes his sweat against mine. When he rips things from me and the boards creak beneath us, protesting the things we do when we’re alone. These things only happen inside my head, and they are glorious.

He’s stingy with his affection. Holds it from me until I can’t stand it anymore. That’s when he takes pity and gives out. 

Gives up. Maybe his loneliness is worse than his pain.

I think about the mission and what it means to Remus. How he hates the idea of it, even when he doesn’t know about it yet. I feel the hate for him and I crumble under my own pressure.

James’ safety weighs on me until breathing is effort. I’m too close to him, too obvious. I think I’m clever. Make a plan. Tell no one. But Remus is too close to me. I have to make him leave, or I’ll never go through with it.

I’ll do it too, because I’m sick and twisted, and I have my own agenda. My soul wants to give the secret to Remus, but he comes and goes, and even through my adoration, I realize that his weakness might turn against him. Us. James. He has to be gone or he’ll be more fucked than me, and I can’t live knowing I did that to him.

How fucked up is that?

The things we do are guaranteed to shorten our lives. Guts, we have. Spilled out onto the pavement before us. Smeared on the sides of buildings in the night when we fight for our lives. Splinched and scattered in the ether, like Marlene.

Glory, what’s that?

James is the glue that holds us all together. He’s gone, and we fall apart.

Pete snorts bubbles up his nose when I tell stories about how bad my family is. I am young, there’s black and white. Grey only happens when I stomp around with muddy feet. I know where I stand. I know I hate it. I know that as soon as I am big enough to reach the lock on the door and strong enough to unfasten it, I throw that black door open and expose myself to the world. 

Then I run like hell.

When I ask Pete anything about his home life, he goes real quiet. I think he actually becomes smaller. It must be a defensive reflex, and I stop asking eventually. We all wonder, but we don’t guess, even among ourselves when he’s not around. No one assumes anything of him, so he assumes for himself. It’s clever, really, the way he manipulates us into thinking so little of him. Damn self-serving git. But that’s how he’s just like the rest of us, so…

It’s another week and another meeting, and after, he’s here at mine instead of his. Remus, with his scars that won’t heal, sits on my couch and drinks my wine and shares my meals. He hides his pain from everyone else, but he lets me see it. He at least gives me that much.

No way in hell he’d agree to go to that damn werewolf colony. 

I pass him a biscuit. He’s here so often that people assume he’s moved in. If only. “Your mum came by the other day.”

“I know, Sirius. I was here.”

“Were you? You looked miles away. I was the one who had to say goodbye and close the door.”

That’s how he gets. Detached. So consumed by his need to get away from it all that…

“What would you have done if it was your mum?” The question hits me sideways. I wasn’t expecting it. Doesn’t keep me from shooting off my mouth. It’s something I’m good at.

“Spit in her face. Oh yeah, that’s right. She would’ve needed to look me up first.” I laugh dryly. My mother doesn’t even care to know where I live. Or that I live. If you can call this thing that I do living.

Marlene likes to laugh at me when I get morose over my life. Of course she thinks I’m full of shite. That’s why I like her so much. Not as much as I like Remus, because what I feel for him in words is inadequate. She wants to know why I choose him over her, and I tell her I don’t want to choose. I only want… I remember that I’m talking to the shadows and suddenly I want to laugh until I cry, but I choke instead, so I stop altogether. Maybe Remus has it right after all. Feeling isn’t necessary. It’s doing and being. Fuck the rest.

I eat. I sleep. Sometimes with him, sometimes without him. I try not to be picky. He can only take so much of me. Of anyone. I know that I’m special because he’s never taken so much of anyone as he has of me. It warms what’s left of my heart.

Another week, another meeting, and I come home to dinner on the table. When Remus gets into one of his moods, he comes to me and shares things. Food. A warm bath. The small stuff. It’s all he’s willing to do. Sometimes I don’t shave or bathe for days, hoping he’ll follow me home and take care of me. 

I’m clean and fed, and feeling needy. Damn clingy, even. Dumbledore’s words have worn me down, and I’m too tired to fight for what I really want, so I fight for what I know I can have.

I murmur into his hair. Yeah, it’s the hair. Sue me.

Remus hears. “You love me,” he says, distant again, though there’s not a breath between us. 

I could wait an eternity for him to turn that around, but I know it’s never going to happen. He doesn’t love. Can’t. Won’t. Because of the pain, I had always guessed. I want to change that for him, change him. Desperately, emphatically. 

His pain. My anguish. God, what a pair we are.

He doesn’t want it, or doesn’t think he can have it. He pushes me away, and I resist. I don’t accept it. I push back into him, crush him to me, tackle him down. The couch goans from our weight.

“Stay.” I know he leaves when he thinks I’m too attached. But he doesn’t realize that I’ve always needed him. Ever since… ever.

“Stay.” I plead with him. Hell, I think a few tears leak out at some point. Pride isn’t something that has ever come between us, so I don’t hold back. He doesn’t know how to take this blatancy. He cringes and winces and he looks down at the floor.

I push harder because I can. Because he can’t take it. I kneel before him, and my words fall into his lap, telling him that all I want is him here, safe. With me, always and forever. I think he cries too, but I’m too busy rubbing his hands into my own face, trying to make him feel. I finally look up, and I know that I haven’t changed him. I’ve only changed the way he looks at me.

“Sirius, I can’t,” he says. It’s the truth, but I don’t want it.

He pushes me aside, and this time I let him. He’s sweaty and sated, but he’s only half-there. I’m used to seeing him like this, but it breaks my heart every single time.

Like I’m not good enough.

Go, Remus. I say it with my eyes because my throat is raw and all the Firewhiskey is gone. Run to the hills, or wherever they’re going to rip you limb from limb. I’ll sit here and pretend it’s not killing me.

Then he’s gone, and I second-guess myself. Again.

I am so screwed.

I have a secret that I can’t share with my lover. 

I have a lover that won’t share himself with me.

I have a best friend who’s in hiding with his wife and kid from a man with no soul who wants to turn the world into black and white and smudge everyone’s shoes in the blood of their neighbors. Just for a bit of fucking color, I bet.

Had had had...

I have nothing. I am so fucking tired of nothing.

Marlene. Heh. She used to say… a lot of shit. I gotta stop listening to her ghost. It makes me look weak and weird and unstable.

Not that I’m not.

I get more Firewhiskey, invite Pete over, and almost don’t do it. He simpers at me, watching me drink, making me comfortable in my own shit. No judgment. He uses words that I love, like ‘mates’ and ‘good times’ and ‘always’. He brings up Remus, and I shake. He asks when we can all be together again, and I break.

He’s eager. Eyes wide. Grinning and nodding like I’m giving him the world. 

People want to know why.

I think it’s what Pete wants. I think it’ll make him stronger. He gets so much shit from everyone when he goes off to “nowhere” and does “nothing”. I think I understand him because if I could find that kind of escape from my life, I would do the same.

So I do it. I give him my world, and he shits on it.

None of us know where Pete goes, but it’s worse than anything we can dream up. He takes my secret and gives it to the maniac that wants James dead. In one night, my life is over. There’s no one to save me this time. 

You know that part of your life when you go searching for who you are, and you wake up one day to find yourself in a shithole full of aresholes and you wonder if that’s where you were meant to be?

Azkaban prison is cold. My good intentions become my weakness and swirl around me as the life drains out of my soul. 

Remus comes in the dark. There’s no light, not even in his eyes. He thinks I did it. He thinks I told my secret to the devil and killed our best mate and his family. He says so to my face, and I don’t deny it - I feel their blood on my hands like it’s true and stay silent, knowing that any words I say are Unforgivable. He thinks I killed Pete too, and I wish to hell that I had. He says he won’t visit me again.

I believe him. About everything. No one makes Remus Lupin do anything he doesn’t want to.

Shit. What have I done?


End file.
